By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, January 19, 2015
Barack Obama did not go out quietly. His unquiet final
acts were overshadowed, in part by a successor who refused to come in quietly,
and in part by Obama’s own endless, sentimental farewell tour. But there was
nothing nostalgic or sentimental about Obama’s last acts. Two of them were
simply shocking.
Perhaps we should have known. At the 2015 White House
Correspondents’ Dinner, he joked about whether he had a bucket list: “Well, I
have something that rhymes with bucket list.”
Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. Commuting the sentence of
Chelsea Manning, one of the great traitors of our time, is finger-in-the-eye
willfulness. Obama took 28 years off the sentence of a soldier who stole and
then released through WikiLeaks almost half a million military reports plus
another quarter-million State Department documents.
The cables were embarrassing; the military secrets were
almost certainly deadly. They jeopardized the lives not just of American
soldiers on two active fronts — Iraq and Afghanistan — but of locals who were,
at great peril, secretly aiding and abetting us. After Manning’s documents
release, the Taliban “went on a killing spree” (according to intelligence
sources quoted by Fox News) of those who fit the description of individuals
working with the United States.
Moreover, we will be involved in many shadowy conflicts
throughout the world. Locals will have to choose between us and our enemies.
Would you choose a side that is so forgiving of a leaker who betrays her
country — and you?
Even the word “leaker” is misleading. Leak makes it sound
like a piece of information a whistleblower gives Woodward and Bernstein to
expose misdeeds in high office. This was nothing of the sort. It was the
indiscriminate dumping of a mountain of national-security secrets certain to bring
harm to American troops, allies, and interests.
Obama considered Manning’s 35-year sentence excessive. On
the contrary. It was lenient. Manning could have been — and in previous ages,
might well have been — hanged for such treason. Now she walks after seven
years.
What makes this commutation so spectacularly in-your-face
is its hypocrisy. Here is a president who spent weeks banging the drums over
the harm inflicted by WikiLeaks with its release of stolen materials and
e-mails during the election campaign. He demanded a report immediately. He
imposed sanctions on Russia. He preened about the sanctity of the American
political process.
Over what? What exactly was released? A campaign
chairman’s private e-mails and Democratic National Committee chatter, i.e.
campaign gossip, backbiting, indiscretions, and cynicism. The usual stuff,
embarrassing but not dangerous. No national-security secrets, no classified
material, no exposure of anyone to harm, just to ridicule and opprobrium.
The other last-minute Obama bombshell occurred four weeks
earlier when, for the first time in nearly a half-century, the United States
abandoned Israel on a crucial Security Council resolution, allowing the passage
of a condemnation that will plague both Israel and its citizens for years to
come. After eight years of reassurance, Obama seized the chance — free of
political accountability for himself and his potential Democratic successor —
to do permanent damage to Israel. (The U.S. has no power to reverse the
Security Council resolution.)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
who went on to be a great Democratic senator, once argued passionately that in
the anti-American, anti-democratic swamp of the U.N., America should act
unwaveringly in opposition and never give in to the jackals. Obama joined the
jackals.
Why? To curry favor with the international Left? After
all, Obama leaves office as a relatively young man of 55. His next chapter
could very well be as a leader on the international stage, perhaps at the U.N.
(secretary-general?) or some transnational (ostensibly) human-rights
organization. What better demonstration of bona fides than a gratuitous attack
on Israel? Or the about-face on Manning and WikiLeaks? Or the freeing of a
still-unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorist, Oscar Lopez Rivera, also pulled off
with three days remaining in his presidency?
A more likely explanation, however, is that these are
acts not of calculation but of authenticity. This is Obama being Obama. He
leaves office as he came in: a man of the Left, but possessing the intelligence
and discipline to suppress his more radical instincts. As of November 9, 2016,
suppression was no longer necessary.
We’ve just gotten a glimpse of his real self. From now
on, we shall see much more of it.
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